“I need a bigger piece,” Gessa said, desperation leaking into her voice. “I’ve outgrown it. The magic is too strong for it to absorb.”
Elms looked at her over the rims of his spectacles, his expression unreadable.
“Gessa,” he said slowly. “This stone is barely three ounces. It has a mild dampening field, yes. Enough to obscure the sense of a very young child. But against a mage of your caliber?”
He set the stone down with a sharpclack.
“This is a pebble trying to stop a tidal wave. It should have stopped working for you years ago.”
Gessa blinked, confused. “But... itdidwork. Until two days ago, it worked perfectly. I held it, and the magic stopped.”
“No,” Elms corrected gently. “You held it, andyoustopped the magic.”
He leaned forward, his eyes intense. “You told me of your past. You were kept on an estate built on iron, were you not? The very ground was saturated with it. You were taught, day after day, that the air you breathed meant silence. That the heavy earth meant you were powerless.”
Gessa flinched, the memory of that oppressive, dead air rising in her throat. “Yes. No magic could breathe there.”
“Your magic responds to your will, Gessa. Even your subconscious will. You believed, with every fiber of your trauma, that iron had the power to bind you. So, your magic obeyed. You didn’t dampen your power with the rock. You dampened it with your belief.”
“So it was a lie?” Gessa stared at the grey lump, feeling a wave of vertigo. “It never helped me?”
“It was a crutch,” Elms said. “A trick of the mind to grant yourself permission to quiet the storm.”
He picked up a clear quartz crystal from his desk and held it up to the window.
“You are trying to block the sun with a coin, Gessa. You hold it up to your eye and tell yourself it is night. And because your will is terrifyingly strong, you actuallymadeit night for yourself. But you cannot lie to yourself anymore.”
“Why?” she whispered. “Why did it stop?”
“Because you are healing,” Elms said simply. “A part of you—the part that is growing, the part that stood in the circle and made a creature of void—no longer believes you are a prisoner. Your power knows it is free, Gessa. It refuses to pretend that a three-ounce rock can hold it back.”
“But without it...” Gessa’s voice hitched. “If I can’t use the stone to stop the noise, how do I stop it?”
“You don’t stop it. You endure it until you command it.”
He pushed the stone back toward her. It looked smaller now. Pathetic, even.
“Iron creates a false sense of safety. That estate taught you that control comes fromsuppression. That you are only safe when the magic is suffocated. That is the lesson of a victim, Gessa, not a Wayfinder.”
He offered her a small, encouraging smile. “The coin doesn’t block the sun anymore. You have to learn to look at the light without flinching.”
She left the tower with the stone back in her pocket, but the weight of it had changed. It wasn’t an anchor anymore. It was just a rock. And she was the one who had to hold back the storm.
Her mornings on Master Jaedon’s anvil were still grueling. But Gessa’s body, to her own astonishment, was adapting. The constant, aching soreness was now a familiar hum beneath a new, unfamiliar layer of hard-won muscle. She was leaner, tougher, her movements surer. She could hold her own now in the exhausting staff drills, and while she was still far from the effortless grace of Roric, she was no longer always the last to finish the punishing ridge runs.
This new competence earned her little warmth from most of the cohort, but it changed the nature of their attention. The whispers about her age and gender were now tinged with a grudging curiosity. In a combat drill where Jaedon paired them off, Finn approached her, his face flushing slightly.
“Recruit Gessa? Would you be my partner?”
Gessa, surprised, had nodded. He was a focused partner, never using his greater strength against her, but pushing her to improve her form.
“That was a good block!” he’d said, breathless, after she’d successfully deflected one of his lunges. “You’re getting much faster.”
The simple, genuine praise was so unexpected it almost made her falter. Before she could respond, Roric’s sneering voice cut across the yard.
“Don’t waste your breath, Finn! She’s getting special attention. Learning all sorts of advanced techniques in her private lessons with Instructor Ky. Aren’t you, grandmother?”
Gessa’s face, thanks to Polan’s brutal lessons, remained a cold, impassive mask. But inwardly, the taunt landed like a lit torch on dry tinder, forcing the memory of the bathhouse to the surface, the illicit, shocking image of Ky’s body, his undeniable magnetism.
